10 minutes

With the approval of the interministerial decree adopting the Guidelines for the implementation of the National Public Registry of Voluntary Carbon Credits generated by the forestry sector, Italy takes a decisive step towards a credible and transparent voluntary carbon market.
This milestone has also been achieved thanks to the LIFE ClimatePositive project, coordinated by Etifor.

In Italy, more than 10 million hectares of forests can generate value and provide services not only for forest managers and landowners, but also for companies investing in projects that deliver measurable benefits for climate and biodiversity. Forests are a strategic resource: they absorb CO₂, regulate the water cycle, safeguard biodiversity, and create economic opportunities linked to their multifunctionality.

The interministerial decree signed on 16 October approves the Guidelines defining the criteria for implementing the National Public Registry of Voluntary Carbon Credits generated by the agricultural and forestry sectors – Forestry Section.
The document sets out the criteria, rules, and procedures for the generation, accounting, and certification of credits voluntarily produced by Italy’s forestry sector.


The National Registry of Forest Carbon Credits will be an online platform collecting projects and managing transactions transparently. It will become fully operational only after the publication—through a decree by the Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry (Masaf)—of the procedures and modalities for registration, updating, and control of credits, which are currently being drafted.

This represents a paradigm shift for those wishing to implement carbon sequestration projects in Italian forests that go beyond legal obligations.
Today, about 90% of carbon credits purchased in Italy come from abroad: the absence of a national registry, along with transparent and reliable methodologies for generating and trading credits, has slowed the development of the domestic market, unlike in other European countries such as France and Spain.

With these new Guidelines, it finally becomes possible to officially measure how much CO₂ is absorbed by interventions carried out in Italian forests and to respond to the growing demand from companies and citizens for certified, locally based initiatives.

These Guidelines for the recognition of carbon credits not only ensure greater transparency of the system but also align with the European climate policy framework—from the Green Deal and the Paris Agreement (2015) to Regulation (EU) No. 2024/3012 (the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation – CRCF), which aims to establish a common European voluntary framework for certifying carbon removals.

The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) is a system in which companies, organisations, or citizens voluntarily purchase carbon credits to offset their greenhouse gas emissions or to support projects that reduce or remove CO₂.
It differs from the compliance market, where participation is mandatory and applies to entities bound by international or national regulations, such as energy companies, industries, or airlines.

In recent years, the voluntary market has experienced rapid global growth, involving an increasing number of companies, public entities, and forest managers. After an initial phase of expansion, the market entered a period of slowdown, driven by concerns over credit quality and transparency, which in turn led to stronger oversight and a shift towards more credible and integrity-based projects.

Italy has followed a similar trend. According to data from the CREA Carbon Monitoring Unit, the volume of carbon credits sold rose from a few hundred thousand tonnes in 2020 to over one million tonnes in both 2021 and 2022, while the average price per tonne increased from around €14 in 2020 to over €28 in 2022
(Source: Maluccio S., Grassi T., Romano R. (2024). Progetti forestali di sostenibilità 2021–2022. Nucleo Monitoraggio Carbonio, CREA, Rome. ISBN: 9788833853819).

However, despite this growth, the national market remained unstructured and lacked shared rules, with credits calculated using different methods and often without independent certification.
The absence of a functioning public registry favoured transactions involving credits generated abroad, at the expense of Italian forest projects.
In this context, the new Guidelines for managing the National Registry of Forest Carbon Credits arrive as a crucial step, bringing clarity, transparency, and credibility to a sector that until now has lacked regulatory coordination.

For now, the Registry concerns only the forestry section, while the agricultural section is still under development.

An Opportunity for Businesses and Local Communities

The new system that will develop in Italy following the establishment of the National Registry of Forest Carbon Credits is not only a step forward in climate governance, but also a concrete opportunity for those who live and work in rural and forested areas.

For forest owners and managers, it can represent an economic recognition of sustainable management practices, thereby creating an additional source of income. For companies, it provides access to certified projects in which to invest, enabling them to contribute transparently to their climate commitments.

However, project development and certification require technical investments, such as the preparation of a forest management plan, which may entail additional costs for landowners and managers.
In this context, cooperation among owners and forest associations can play a decisive role by aggregating forest areas, reducing unit costs, and ensuring efficient project management.

Furthermore, to guarantee project integrity and avoid risks of misleading communication or greenwashing, the Guidelines include rules for potential credit buyers. Companies purchasing credits must demonstrate that they have implemented a credible path of emissions reduction and offsetting.

A carbon credit is an environmental certificate representing the reduction, avoidance, or removal of one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e) from the atmosphere.
It is a tradable unit in carbon markets, generated by projects that deliver measurable, verifiable, and additional climate impacts compared to a defined baseline scenario.
A carbon credit must be certified by an accredited body and registered in an official public or private registry.

Forest-based credits may derive from initiatives such as reforestation, sustainable forest management, ecosystem conservation, or regenerative agricultural practices.
These mechanisms make it possible to monetise the climate benefits of such projects and to establish a virtuous link between those who reduce or remove emissions and those investing to meet their decarbonisation targets.

How the New System Works

The Guidelines establish detailed procedures for the submission, verification, and registration of forestry projects.
Eligible projects must include improved forest management, afforestation and reforestation, timber forestry, and agroforestry practices, all supported by long-term commitments and rigorous monitoring.
The Guidelines also introduce criteria for recognising credits related to long-lived wood products, which store carbon for at least 35 years, thus supporting a circular and sustainable wood economy.

The system involves the following actors:

  • Operators or groups of operators (public and private owners/managers of agricultural and forest areas) wishing to implement sequestration projects;

  • Companies and investors interested in purchasing certified credits;

  • Independent Certification Bodies (OCE) accredited by Accredia.

Registration and Certification Process

1. Project Design

The operator prepares a project document demonstrating commitments beyond the baseline (to comply with the additionality criterion), consistent with forest management and protection regulations or regional rules. The project must meet stringent criteria for quantification, permanence, sustainability, and monitoring.

2. Certification

Certification – An accredited certification and inspection body (via Accredia) verifies compliance with the Guidelines and checks calculations based on IPCC models, including random inspections of field activities.

3. CREA Assessment

The project is submitted to CREA, the authority responsible for controlling and coordinating the Registry, which reviews the certification documents and assesses consistency with the Guidelines.

4. Registration and Transaction

CREA records the credits in the Registry and authorises their transaction (a private contract between parties), issuing a certificate to the owner or manager. After the sale, the owner/manager must report the operation, and the credits are blocked and cancelled to prevent double counting.

The Registry will become fully operational once the implementation procedures at CREA are completed. CREA will manage the digital platform and ensure coordination with ISPRA, Regional Authorities, SIAN, and SINFor.
Credits generated from 1 January 2021 onwards may be registered, provided they comply with the Guidelines and are consistent with EU Regulation 2018/841 and the Paris Agreement.
Credits may be used exclusively within the national voluntary market (not in the EU ETS or CORSIA systems).

Eligible Activities (Summary)

  • Improved forest management: lengthening coppice rotation cycles, fire and pest prevention, regeneration protection, structural and compositional naturalisation, and natural recolonisation of degraded areas.

  • Long-lived wood products: structural uses with a minimum lifespan of ≥35 years, using nationally sourced material.

  • Afforestation and reforestation, permanent forestry, agroforestry systems (silvo-arable and silvo-pastoral systems with a density of 50–150 trees/ha), post-extreme event interventions, buffer strips, windbreaks, ecological corridors, and tree lines.

Not eligible:

  • interventions with negative environmental or social impacts;
  • reductions in harvesting not required by management plans or regulations;
  • reforestation in wetlands;
  • replacement of natural forests;
  • mandatory interventions (EIA, SEA, compensations);
  • planting of invasive alien species.

A Clearer and More Reliable Market

With the implementation of the National Registry of Forest Carbon Credits, Italy finally fills a long-standing regulatory gap, bringing order to a previously fragmented market.
The new Guidelines provide clear rules and consistent criteria for the creation and trading of carbon credits, ensuring that every project is based on verifiable scientific data and certified by independent bodies.

The public registry will be accessible online, offering full traceability and transparency for all registered projects.
It will make it possible to identify who generates the credits, where interventions take place, and how much CO₂ is actually sequestered.
This represents a decisive step in giving credibility to Italy’s voluntary carbon market, while allowing companies, citizens, and public administrations to invest in high-quality environmental projects capable of generating tangible benefits for climate, biodiversity, and local communities.

Beyond serving as a regulatory tool, the Registry also acts as a driver of development: it will attract new investments to rural and forest areas, promoting sustainable and active forest management that can create employment, economic value, and territorial resilience.

A Key Milestone of the LIFE ClimatePositive Project

The establishment of the National Registry of Forest Carbon Credits is not an endpoint but rather the result of a long and collaborative process carried out by a wide network of institutional and non-institutional actors working together to build a solid and transparent voluntary forest carbon market in Italy.

Within this process lies the LIFE ClimatePositive project, coordinated by Etifor and funded by the European Commission’s LIFE Programme, which since 2022 has been strengthening and expanding the work already initiated by Etifor in support of CREA and the Carbon Monitoring Unit.
Etifor has long contributed to working groups, supporting the development of the technical, scientific, and operational foundations for the implementation of the National Guidelines and co-authoring strategic documents such as the report “Progetti forestali di sostenibilità in Italia.”

Through the LIFE ClimatePositive project, several essential tools have been developed to enable the practical implementation of the Registry, including:

  • an analysis of regional forestry regulations to build a shared national baseline;

  • the creation of the Carbon Tool, designed to estimate and monitor forest carbon stocks;

  • and the testing of pilot projects applying sustainable forest management practices, which can serve as replicable models at the national scale.

These tools, grounded in a robust and rigorous methodological framework, will be fundamental in guiding forest owners and managers in developing high-quality forest-based carbon credit projects.

The LIFE ClimatePositive project therefore represents a cornerstone in Italy’s transition toward a climate- and biodiversity-positive economy, where sustainable forest and land management become fully integrated into national and European climate strategies.

For more information on the project, visit www.lifeclimatepositive.it and subscribe to the newsletter.